Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s Sculptures Reveal How Looks Can Be Deceiving

Over the past decade, London-based Danish artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen has frequently used artworks to represent larger, often invisible, economic processes and systems. ‘Metal Works’, her current solo show at Ordet in Milan, takes a formalist approach, including a rich assortment of stand-alone pieces – as well as elements extracted from larger, multimedia installations – connected by the titular material. Decontextualized, these works appear silent; but, by paying close attention to their shiny surfaces and colourful oxidation, we become aware that Hansen is, once again, using materials as a starting point for a broader reflection on the opaque nature of capitalist – and artistic – production.

In the series ‘Hollow Eyed’ (2017), for instance, six seemingly identical silicon-metal sculptures are neatly arranged on the wall. Simultaneously evoking emojis and death masks, these pieces could, in their original incarnation, be activated by a purpose-built app and facial-recognition technology that, in the words of the exhibition literature, referenced the ‘depersonalization of work in the current service economy’. The original installation also included video documentation of the foundry where the sculptures were cast (Maybrey Foundry, 2017), making visible the link between the work and the industrial manufacture of silicon – a material used in the production of microchips. Presented here as stand-alone objects, the sculptures become the focus, with close inspection revealing how each piece differs slightly from the others: unique, wrinkle-like cracks adorn their emotionless faces and lend their surfaces an uncanny, fleshly quality. In places, fingerprints have left permanent marks on the silicon, further disrupting the illusion that the sculptures are identical. The closer we look at their material surfaces, the less certain the works’ industrial, mass-produced nature becomes.

The coarse materiality of the silicon skin in 'Hollow Eyed'  is thrown into even greater relief by the work’s proximity in this installation to the stainless-steel surfaces of Real Doll Theatre (neo-libertine) and Control Room no. 2 (both 2018). The former comprises cleanly cut, almost ethereal wall lettering, whilst the latter consists of a grey doorbell, adorned with a single button and the name of the manufacturer, ‘Comelit’. Both allude to the German brothel where Hansen filmed Maintenancer (2018), a documentary about the use of dolls as sex workers and the people employed for their upkeep. Here, without further context, the pieces merely serve as silent signifiers.

The exhibition contains numerous instances of written language incorporated into metal. Anti- (2017), for instance, is a piggy bank cast in bronze, its surface crossed with creases that converge towards a vaguely anus-shaped snout. Hansen’s decision to opt for a golden-hued metal underscores the work’s allusions to money and capitalistic accumulation. The piece’s title is found written on the animal’s side, spelled out in raised lettering. While the letters are visible in photographic documentation, they are less decipherable in the space itself, where the pig’s shiny skin reflects the bright gallery lights. In a 2022 interview with ArtReview, Hansen said that she associates aesthetic perfection ‘with an erasure of the labour that goes into capitalist production’. Looking at Anti-’s metal surface, one might ask: how do artists’ working conditions affect their capacity for defiance? Can art ever be fully critical of the system that sustains it?

The swine’s golden skin reflects these questions back at the viewer. Appearances can be deceptive: the formal analysis of a work might not be enough to reveal its history and meaning. Hansen knows that, in our capitalist world, we are taught to see things as monads – isolated and self-sufficient entities, separated from context and history. In ‘Metal Works’, the artist subjects her own practice to this same reality in a bid to showcase the opacity of our material environments.

Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s ‘Metal Works’ is on view at Ordet, Milan, until 28 September

_{Main image: Sidsel Meineche Hansen, 'Hollow Eyed', 2017, silicon metal and investment cast. Courtesy: the artist, Sylvia Kouvali, London/Piraeus and Christian Andersen, Copenhagen; photograph: Nicola Gnesi}